So I started writing workbooks for my KS3 students in the first lockdown, realising that firstly, many students don’t have access to the internet, or when they do it is patchy when all their family are on it, and secondly, that today’s children who do have the internet at home are not going to be impressed by any sort of IT that an old man like me can do. So I began writing workbooks that are fully self-contained and discovered that my students prefer this style even though we are back in school. For a start, many RE lessons at my school are taught by nonspecialists, and this workbook style of lessons means that the lack of subject specialism doesn’t really affect things too much. Also they can catch up when they are absent, or when the teacher is absent they can get on with the work with no fuss. I find parents like it too as the information is all there and this means they can help their children with working from home. I’ve been an RE teacher for about 20 years, and been HoD for 15 of those, so what you are getting here is a set of lessons that I have worked on to improve each year, and the benefit of my experience as an RE teacher. The file will download as a PDF so you can just ping it to your school reprographics department to print as an A4 booklet. I try to be faithful to the faith and although I am not a muslim myself, my local Imam whose mosque I visit each year with students has read through this booklet in the draft stage and given me his input, and then sort of “approved” the final version, in that it doesn’t miss anything obvious out and is respectful to the principles of Islam - importantly, it is a learning material that you could use with muslims in the class. The unit is loosely based around the 5 pillars of Islam, lessons are: Lesson #1: What do Muslims believe in? P2 Lesson #2: How do Muslims worship? P10 Lesson #3: What is the purpose of fasting? P15 Lesson #4: How do Muslims help others? P18 Lesson #5: What is a pilgrimage? P23 Lesson #6: Is it difficult to be a Muslim in the UK? (Assessment task) P29 Key Concepts to learn P35

Another one of my workbooklets - this one is about women. Lesson #1: How did women win freedoms? - history of women’s rights Lesson #2: What did Bathsheba want? - reworking of the story of King David from his new wife’s point of view. Lesson #3: Are women treated fairly in Islam? - focus on headdresses, debate about French law that bans the burkha - is it a symbol of repression or an expression of faith? Lesson #4: Is the Church sexist? - a lesson about literal and liberal interpretations of Christian scripture about women. Lesson #5: Who is your famous female hero? - space for some personal research, a guest speaker or a IT lesson. Lesson #6: Assessment write-up - focussing on inspirational women, and why they are considered inspirational. What you get here is the result of 20 years of teaching this topic, each year I adapt it and improve the sequence of lessons. I have been HEad of RE for 15 years and make sure my workbooks tick the boxes that RE teachers need to tick - literacy, textual studies, debates, reflective practice and AO2, British Values, PSHE, it does it all. Originally written for lockdown learning my students ask me to continue using these workbooks with them in class as they can finish the lesson at home, or catch up easily if they miss a lesson, and cover lessons are so much better quality - my students have an hour a week of RE but only 1 hour a fortnight of that is with me, the RE specialist in school, so the booklet allows for continuity between teachers and allows my technical input each lesson.

This includes 2 workbooklets written by me to support non-specialist/home learning lessons. Together both booklets cover all the material and exam practice for Theme A Relationships in AQA GCSE Spec A. This is also one of the 4 units int he Short Course. I have been Head of RE for 15 years and also work for the exam board. The material is written in an easy to use format, with pictures and illustrations, and written tasks interspersed with the material to read. Booklet 1 Lesson #1: How have attitudes to family life changed? p3 Lesson #2: What views do religions have about same-sex couples? p8 Lesson #3: Why get married? p15 Lesson #4: Is divorce always a bad thing? p22 Lesson #5: When should people have children? p26 Lesson #6: Assessment p29 Booklet 2 Lesson #1: What is a family? p2 Lesson #2: What do religions teach about family values? p8 Lesson #3: What do religions teach about gender roles? p17 Lesson #4: Sexism case study p21 Lesson #5: Revision of Relationships & Family p27 Lesson #6: Assessment p31

This is a booklet which I wrote for the Christianity Beliefs and Teachings unit for AQA GCSE unit. I have tried to break up the information with tasks, and present it in a user-friendly way that an average 14/15 year old can get on with. I have been a Head of RE for 15+ years and work for the exam board. This booklet has been tested for a few years with 6 classes a year so has been tweeked and revised, so its now ready to print and use with a class, or inidividuals. Lesson #1: Is Jesus the Messiah? p3 Lesson #2: What sort of God do Christians believe in? p9 Lesson #3: Can Christians solve the Problem of Evil? p15 Lesson #4: How should the creation myths be understood? p21 Lesson #5: What do Christians believe about life after death? p27 Lesson #6: Assessment p31

This is a booklet I use with Y8 for lessons on Prejudice and Discrimination. To make life easy in coronavirus conditions I have turned my schemes into work booklets with everything they need for 6 lessons + homework contained within it. This scheme of work has been in the making for years, and now helpfully organised into one resource. Each page has varied layout with pictures etc so that it can be printed out as an A3 folded/A4 workbooklet by your repro department. Lesson 1 Where does extremism come from? This explores the causes of extremism and terrorism, asks students to make judgements from reading material about well-known extremists and then leaves them to respond to ideas about how terrorism and extremism can be prevented. Lesson 2 What caused the Salem Witch Trials? Students are confronted with the historical information about the Salem Witch Trials and after an investigate with some of the characters involved will need to make conclusions about the role of public hysteria in the events. Lesson 3 What did Martin Luther King achieve? No RE curriculum on discrimination is complete without reference to MLK, so students are exposed to the radically pacifist methods which made the civil rights movement successful. After some close textual work with the “I have a dream” speech, they reflect on whether MLK’s dream came true. Very topical with BLM campaign events at the moment. Lesson 4 Where did antisemitism come from? Through examining various sources throughout the past 2000 years, students are confronted with the reality that the Nazis did not invent antisemitism itself. They do however have to make a judgement about whether Hitler’s views are more or less extreme than some of the other antisemitic propaganda through the ages. Lesson 5 What happened in the Holocaust? Students are introduced to the stages of Nazi hatred against Jews to reflect on the scale of the Holocaust. They are asked whether ex-Nazis should be forgiven and are led to understand the basis for conviction at the Nuremberg Trials, before being asked why studying the Holocaust is important. Lesson 6 What causes prejudice and discrimination? This is the assessment task, where students use everything they have learnt in the previous lessons to explain why prejudice and discrimination exist.

A 7-lesson scheme fully resourced for each lesson with a detailed overview document, PPT for each lesson, worksheets clearly labelled according to the phase of lesson. I have quite a few years’ experience as Head of RE & have been tweaking this particular scheme for years now. It is written in a way so that non-specialists can “turn up and teach” without any planning. Literacy skills are built into the lessons and if you can book ahead it would be ideal to try to get a Holocaust survivor into school to support this - the Holocaust Education Trust can help with this for the cost of travel expenses and it is a really worthwhile experience. The assessment task can be based on this talk, or if not possible, show them a film clip. Lesson 1 - Extremism The scheme starts with considering extremism & terrorism and asks where this comes from. Students explore the causes and suggest solutions. Lesson 2 - Salem Witch Trials In 1692 the people of Salem go on a witchhunt - food supplies dwindle, there are family rivalries and people begin to fear the unknown. Hysteria sets in and in the course of one winter they have put over a dozen people to death. What are the parallels with today? Lesson 3 - Martin Luther King What was the problem? How did Dr King lead the Civil Rights Movement? How does pacifism overcome hatred? Examine his “I have a dream” speech in detail and think about whether the dream came true. Lesson 4 - Jews in Germany Why were they singled out? Where did antisemitism come from? Why were they blamed? Looking at the history of antisemitism, we must confront the unpleasant truth that antisemitism has been around for centuries and is built into our institutions. Lesson 5 - The Holocaust Look in detail at what happened and why. Allow students to ask questions and reflect on the scale. Lesson 6 - Assessment piece - why should we remember the Holocaust? If you can book a speaker then they can write about that specific example - if not, show them a film clip of a survivor and base their ideas on that. The important thing here is to develop their explanation of why we ought to remember the Holocaust and what it teaches us - when politics move from patriotism to nationalism there is always a group of people who are demonised. Lesson 7 - Reconciliation After you’ve done some follow-up work from last lesson’s assessment, there is some information to read about what happened in South Africa after aparteid ended. Is it possible for groups who previously feared each other to come together? I hope so.

This is a complete 6 lesson unit of work exploring Holy Week & Jesus. I use it in the run up to Easter with Year 7. It is fully resourced with a detailed scheme of learning document. Every resource has a file name that denotes the lesson it belongs to, and resources also contain the phase of the lesson it may be used at, and these lesson phases correspond with the scheme of learning document for ease of use. Every lesson has a quality Powerpoint presentation to accompany it, with lesson tasks, ideas and information. Homework tasks are also built into the scheme, as are reading texts and extended writing tasks. Lesson 1 explores the historical evidence for Jesus and asks questions abou tthe feeding of the 5000. Lesson 2 looks at the people involved in Palm Sunday and gets students writing a newspaper article to report on events with a bias. Lesson 3 considers the Last Supper and links this to the Eucharist. Lesson 4 asks students to consider Good Friday from the perspective of someone who was there. Lesson 5 reviews the evidence for the Resurrection in preparation for the following assessment lesson. Lesson 6 is focussed on getting the students to write an extended piece of writing about whether the Resurrection actually happened. There is a structure sheet available for this, and it is intended to build evaluation skills needed for GCSE AQA Question 5 type answers, though this could be adapted for whichever GCSE syllabus you follow. I am an experienced RE teacher, now Head of Humanities faculty, and with responsibility for leading and delivering Religous Studies at every level. This scheme of learning has been in the making for 15 years, being tweaked each year for improvements here and there - here is 15 years of effort and experience available to you for £5! I use this scheme of learning when I am training teachers about lesson planning to show what a good unit of work should contain. May also be of interest to schools without a specialist RE teacher - I have many non-specialists teaching RE so all my schemes have to be written in a way that presumes no subject knowledge by the teacher.

Here are 2 workbooks I made during lockdown to cover the whole material and exam practice for the Religion, Peace and Conflict theme which is part of the Short Course and Theme D in Spec A. My students did not all have access to the internet and when they did they found there wasn’t enough bandwidth jiggery pokery for them all to use it at the same time so I started writing workbooks for them to use. Since we are back in school now they have all asked to carry on with this approach as it allows them to work at their own pace, so lessons become more workshop style and less about me telling them facts about the world. It doesn’t stop me from doing whole class tasks but it does allow me to tailor discussions to particular strengths and needs and gives them an excellent revision resource. I thought about combining them into one booklet, but by keeping separate it is possible for reprographics to print all 6 lessons into an A4 booklet, and keeps their work contained into 5 lessons and an assessment - so you can mark the assessments whilst they start the new topic. My workbooks are all self-contained, with all the info they will need and with tasks which I try to vary, interspersed - a lot of the workbooks I have seen involve a big load of text followed by a list of questions, which just doesn’t work for my learners. The assessments have my marking grid on the back, sometimes you want to give specific feedback, but other times, for example myself with 180 students to teach in the same year group, you need to turn the assessment feedback into something that is manageable. It also means that you can talk to the students about common pitfalls before they do the assessment. I’ve been an RE teacher 20 years, so you are getting the benefit of my experience here. I’ve seen all the initiatives come and go, I try to make sure my workbooks tick the boxes - literacy, Biblical texts, PSHE, British Values, etc etc. For £5 you are buying a self-contained series of 12 lessons that covers the Theme D unit. This took me 2 full weekends to write and edit. Booklet 1: Lesson #1: Who was Gandhi? p2 Lesson #2: Should Christians be pacifists? p8 Lesson #3: What is a Just War? p14 Lesson #4: What causes war? p21 Lesson #5: Is Holy War possible? p25 Lesson #6: Assessment p30 Booklet 2: Lesson #1: What are nuclear weapons? p2 Lesson #2: Is Just War possible today? p7 Lesson #3: Q5 technique/Where does extremism come from? p14 Lesson #4: What do Christians teach about forgiveness and reconciliation? p21 Lesson #5: Does protest change anything? p27 Lesson #6: Assessment p34

This is a 56 page revision guide that I put together for my own students as a complete guide. We do the AQA short course with Christianity & Judaism. This is not all original work, but if you teach the SC to whole cohorts you will know how reluctant parents are to buy the official printed revision guides so I made my own that is comprehensive enough to benefit top set students but also the right size so that our reprographics department can print it as an A4 stapled booklet. I have 15 years of experience of being Head of RE and training students for different exam specifications over that time - I have tried to condense the most useful aspects of exam preparation into this guide - it is a complete guide including what the expect, how to revise, checklists and information on the subject content. This is the only revision guide I use with my students and we get decent results - comparative with English, Maths & Science. It took me days of my time to write this! There are other revision resources I have put on TES that will save time for you. The contents page shows what it includes: What the exam paper looks like – 3 What is development? - 4 Exam strategy - 5 Memory Cheat Sheet #1 – 6 Memory Cheat Sheet #2 - 7 How to revise for the exam (C.R.A.M.P.S.) - 8 Revision checklists Christianity checklist - 9 Judaism checklist - 10 Families and Relationships checklist - 11 Religion, Peace & Conflict checklist - 12 Religious groups within Christianity & Judaism - 13 Course content notes Christianity notes - 14 Judaism notes - 22 Families & Relationships notes - 31 War & Conflict notes - 41 Basic quotes to learn - 52 Sample exam questions - 53